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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Oh man am I ever excited for 2012. Sadly when it comes to this blog 2011 was not a stellar performance in content and especially in regularity. Several things contributed to this but rather than crying like a child and making excuses I am going to rededicate myself to getting back to a better blog with better regularity. I know we are in the time of New Years resolutions and I could make a long list and then feel crappy about my failures by mid February or sooner. I am instead going to make myself a list of 100 “options” for the New Year and then feel tremendously successful if I achieve a 10% success rate. I have some newly found energy and focus and it is other people in agriculture that I have to thank.

There are so many great “agvocates” out there that do so much in telling our story. What is truly amazing to me is how they do it on such a regular basis and do such an incredible job of it. Many of them find the time to actually post DAILY! I figure I have a minimum of 3 posts a month just taking time to direct my readers to other bloggers and “agvocates”. There is a downside to these great people in the fact that the more of them I find the more I prefer reading them than I prefer sharing my own life. I will share some of these incredible people and their contributions as we make our way through 2012. Most of these people I have met through Twitter and if you have an account I would be glad to know and “follow”. My account there ishttp://twitter.com/#!/TheDailyCowman

To help with this new focus and adventure I went out tonight and bought myself a new laptop. This desktop is getting old and slow and between my maintenance schedule of dumping coffee on the keyboard, blowing off the tower once a year and regular kicks from my boots it has developed a few issues. The new laptop uploaded pictures in about 30 seconds tonight that I have been trying to upload on the desktop for months. I just feel that a blog post is so much more interesting if I can post a picture from my daily life when I post.

These days I am working to get as many cows to cornstalks so they can feed themselves and not be fed expensive hay. Lots of hotwire fence building, panel moving and cow hauling rule the day as we fast approach spring calving. Dakota has been home this week for Christmas vacation and having her help makes the day so much more fun and productive. As this young lady approaches her 15th birthday she has become an integral part of getting things done around here, I am very proud and thankful for your help Gus. Between her help and her mother going dutifully off to work everyday to earn money to feed us it makes my addiction to chasing cows much easier to indulge in.

One thing you will notice on this blog as we charge into 2012 is that some posts will be much more abbreviated. Some nights it might just be a few sentences or a picture or two but to see that I only did 6 more posts in ALL of 2011 than I did in January of 2010 makes me want to try much harder. I thank all of you that have supported my efforts and as always I am a big boy and any input you have will be gladly taken as to how I could improve.

I tend to relate just about everything in life to mother cows, sometimes that is not always a good thing but you would be surprised how much cows imitate life. One of the things a good mother beef cow does is raise a good sized calf, while rebreeding and preparing herself for the following year. I am going to do all I can to emulate cow #5231B. This little cow has at times been a bit of a challenge because of her attitude but because of her amazing ability continues to stay here on the ranch. Today’s picture is her with her massive steer calf #0231W born in February 2011, clear back in September 2011. This big boy is now being fed out and will provide nutritious, healthy and wholesome protein for a hungry world. His momma will be bringing another stellar child into this world soon I have no doubt.

I also need to shout out a Happy Birthday to a very special lady that turned 21 today. Chelsey, our summer intern is enjoying a few drinks tonight and they are very well deserved. Happy Birthday kiddo!

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is the Eastern cottontail rabbit aka Sylvilagus floridanus.